The Apple v.
Samsung trial that begins in a San Jose federal
courtroom on 30 July could emerge as the most important patent
dispute of the decade. Apple and Samsung are accusing each other of
infringing on a number technology patents, while Apple also claims
that Samsung's Galaxy phones and tablets wrongfully copy
the look and feel of the
iPhone and iPad.

The outcome of the battle could have far-reaching ramifications
across the consumer electronics and mobile industries. Kevin
Packingham, Samsung's Chief Product Officer, knows what's at stake,
having previously worked as an executive at Sprint Nextel before
launching a start-up that helped China's Huawei bring its phones
and tablets to the United States.

Ahead of the trial, Packingham stopped by Wired's newsroom in
San Francisco to talk about Samsung's role in the ongoing patent
wars that have spawned dozens of lawsuits across the globe,
involving not only Samsung and Apple, but also HTC, Motorola and
Microsoft, among others. For its part, Samsung owns more than
100,000 patents worldwide, so it's certainly no stranger to the
patents game, and all the litigation it involves. Here is the
edited conversation. ‪

Wired: How does Samsung reconcile being both a
business partner, with its components division, and a litigant,
with its products division, against rivals such as
Apple?
Kevin Packingham: The two parts of the company, they're
extremely isolated. There are times when I'm absolutely appalled
that we sell what I consider to be the most innovative, most secret
parts of the sauce of our products to some other manufacturer -
HTC, LG, Apple, anybody. And they [the components groups] are like,
'Look, that's none of your business. You go make your mobile phones
and if you'd like to use our components, that'd be great.' But you
know, we also use Qualcomm components, and we source from other
component manufacturers as well.

It seems most of the patents that Samsung is either
licensing to other folks, or using against competitors in patent
suits, are related more to technology than design - 3G technologies
and other wireless technologies, for example. But what's used
against Samsung most often focuses on design. Does Samsung just not
have a ton of design patents? Or is it just impossible to patent a
rectangular piece of glass with a touchscreen, which every
smartphone and tablet has today, and is under dispute in the Apple
trial?
In terms of patents, we have a made lot of contributions in the
design space as well. I would say the patents we're struggling with
- where there's a lot of discussion and litigation right now - are
around these very broad design patents like a rectangle. For us,
it's unreasonable that we're fighting over rectangles, that that's
being considered as an infringement, which is why we're defending
ourselves.

Hopefully the entire industry is in the position now where we
have to defend ourselves and say, "Look, it's unreasonable for us
to be in the position of claiming that there is design, claiming
that there is some sort of protected property, around a rectangle."
So I would say, yeah, we have design patents as well, but they're
not as simple as the rectangle. And so that's where I think you see
a little bit of this challenge.

In some cases, for most of us in the industry, it's defying
common sense. We're all scratching our heads and saying, "How is
this possible that we're actually having an industry-level debate
and trying to stifle competition?" Consumers want rectangles and
we're fighting over whether you can deliver a product in the shape
of a rectangle.

Logically, as an engineering and manufacturing company, it makes
more sense to focus on the things that are really relevant and we
think are truly intellectual property. They are truly unique, and
have come intrinsically out of the investments we made in R&D.
A rectangle did not come out of R&D investment that we've made.
Some of our products happen to be in the shape of a rectangle, but
I wouldn't consider that to be an art or a science that we've
created.

It seems the patent system is broken. Injunctions are
imposed and lifted all the time. Is there a way that Samsung can
take a leadership position in all this to stop the fighting?
Because nobody is doing that right now. In general, this isn't a Samsung issue. This is an
industry issue that we need to collectively solve. We are all
trying to make sure that we are creating products and services that
can be successful in the marketplace, and are interesting to
consumers. So we need to find a way in which we can have healthy
competition and not try to stifle competition with patents that
aren't particularly unique, and really don't represent intellectual
property.

Maybe leadership isn't the right word then. Maybe
peacemaker is the right word. Samsung is a leader in terms of
having a ton of patents on the books. But these patents are
sometimes used as weapons against other companies, and others are
using their patents to fight back.
In the current environment, there's just one company that's firing
the first shot consistently. Most everybody else seems to be
getting along really well. There are a few areas where there has
been some contention recently, but if you look at those areas of
contention, they were legitimate and people were able to come to
terms, business terms, that were reasonable. That's the way the
system should work.

We should be able to have a good, healthy dialogue about how
we're going to advance technology, how we're going to advance the
consumer experience. Not around how we're going to isolate our
companies and prevent innovation from entering the marketplace.

How does Samsung deal with the uncertainty of which
patent suits may or may not come your way upon a new product
launch?
We always do everything we can to make sure that when we're
implementing technology, that we're licensing everything that
should be covered, particularly under suppliers where we are
leveraging technology that doesn't originate from Samsung.

But at the same time there are things where we don't necessarily
have awareness of an entire space. So you always have some things
where you know there's probably going to be some additional
conversations required after launching a product, but that's
natural and in the past it's never been a barrier to us introducing
new products.